Editorial A lethal dose

A man died this week in Indiana, strapped to a padded table in a sterile room.

He was administered a lethal dose of drugs. The government killed him out of revenge for a horrible act of terrorism that murdered 168 people, including 19 children, in a large public building reduced to smoking rubble.

The murderer, a soldier, claimed to have acted in retaliation for homicide by the government at Waco, at Ruby Ridge. To him, the lives he mourned were heroic victims, the lives he took were "collateral damage."

All this killing, so little value to human life. It seems irrational, all this symbolic killing. We value human life, but we take lives so easily.

Killing the murderer will bring no real satisfaction. We are not satisfied by irrational events in our lives. We always assign explanations.

But this death has no meaning. There was no punishment. This was not an act of justice.

Except for the condemned man. He chose to die. Choosing to die is an act of great personal meaning, simply because in so many ways it is the ultimate irrational act.

A being choosing not to be.

The padded table where he died was festooned with straps. It sits in a sterile room, similar to a hospital emergency room where lives are saved. Those straps hold down arms and legs to prevent a prisoner from pulling out the needle, to ensure quiet surrender to the lethal dose.

Some wanted the condemned to struggle against the straps, his death, to cry out for forgiveness from the Lord. He did not. You cannot force surrender of the soul.

In fact, the condemned welcomed his death. He received the attention of the world for his twisted message. He became a martyr for his cause, aided by the government he hated.

He died a little after 7 a.m. Lying on that padded table in that sterile room, he took two deep breaths, then he was dead. From a lethal dose.

There were windows in the room, where those invited could watch the execution.

But the rest of us could not watch, even though we were all to an extent victims. Some could and the rest of us couldn't.

It is simple to say the demon deserved to die for his heinous crime.

An eye for an eye.

It is also simple to say the State has no right to intentionally kill anyone.

Thou shalt not kill.

Those who favor the death penalty are often opposed to assisted suicide. Those who favor assisted suicide are often opposed to the death penalty.

The condemned man fooled them all. He committed assisted suicide via the death penalty.

They granted the death wish of a murderer, to commit a celebrated suicide via lethal injection on a padded table in a sterile room.

We used to believe suicide was immoral, if not illegal. What deterrent can be imposed? Some still greatly oppose an individual choosing the time and place of death, a choice they view as taking prerogative from God.

Perhaps they fear suicide as a statement that life itself is not always worth living. Perhaps they fear that humans are not capable of answering the question of how and when that moment may come.

The chasm which divides us on this issue is that of "choice." The condemned man knew this when, led to the death chamber, he etched the words "...master of my fate, captain of my soul..." into the national consciousness.

He chose to die, and did so by silencing appeals on his behalf. He committed suicide by allowing the State to kill him, strapped without struggle to a padded table in a sterile room, with a lethal dose.

There is great shouting and tears over the death of one bad man, yet all this killing continues, we kill because we mourn those who have been killed.

Perhaps life is not as sacred as each of us would believe. Perhaps we are not rational when it comes to what life means, and what death does not.

Standing outside the prison where the man was killed, reporters from all over this great land scurried to interview a witness to the execution or parent of a victim, carrion birds ready to pounce, not on the corpse of the dead man, but on the body of our confusion.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, the U.S. government has intentionally killed a U.S. citizen by order of the court.

Why didn't his death put us out of our misery?

Eric Dolson is publisher of the Nugget newspaper.